Black Athena Writes Back: Martin Bernal Responds to His Critics - Softcover

Bernal, Martin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822327171 ISBN 13: 9780822327172

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2001

Synopsis

In Black Athena Writes Back Martin Bernal responds to the passionate debates set off by the 1987 publication of his book Black Athena. Producing a shock wave of reaction from scholars, Black Athena argued that the development of Greek civilization was heavily influenced by Afroasiatic civilizations. Moreover, Bernal asserted that this knowledge had been deliberately obscured by the rampant racism of nineteenth-century Europeans who could not abide the notion that Greek society—for centuries recognized as the originating culture of Europe—had its origins in Africa and Southwest Asia.
The subsequent rancor among classicists over Bernal’s theory and accusations was picked up in the popular media, and his suggestion that Greek culture had its origin in Africa was widely derided. In a report on 60 Minutes, for example, it was suggested that Bernal’s hypothesis was essentially an attempt to provide blacks with self-esteem so that they would feel included in the march of progress.
In Black Athena Writes Back Bernal provides additional documentation to back up his thesis, as well as offering persuasive explanations of why traditional scholarship on the subject remains inaccurate and why specific arguments lobbed against his theories are themselves faulty.
Black Athena Writes Back requires no prior familiarity with either the Black Athena hypothesis or with the arguments advanced against it. It will be essential reading for those who have been following this long-running debate, as well as for those just discovering this fascinating subject.

About this title

Review:

“Black Athena must be the most discussed book on the ancient history of the eastern Mediterranean world since the Bible. . . . [It] enjoys such continued attention because it raises important scholarly questions, and because it makes a difficult subject available to a large audience.”—Mario Liverani, in Black Athena Revisited

“A fascinating and important debate. As a lay reader I find both the scholarly arguments and the human differences very gripping. Bernal tells the story of the process of academic diffusion very vividly and gives us the kind of background we don't usually discover.”—Margaret Drabble

“[F]ew books published about the ancient world since World War II have provoked as much interest both inside and outside the discipline of classics as has Black Athena.”—Guy MacLean Rogers, in Black Athena Revisited

From the Author:

Martin Bernal is Professor of Government and Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. The first two volumes of Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (“I: The Fabrication of Ancient Greece, 1785–1985”; and “II: The Archaeological and Documentary Evidence”) have been translated into German, Italian, Spanish, French, and Swedish and will soon be available in Greek and Japanese.

David Chioni Moore is Assistant Professor of International Studies and English at Macalester College.

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0822327171
• ISBN 13: 9780822327172
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 576
• Editor: Moore David Chioni